Talking of carbon oars, I am finally refurbishing the second hand pairs I bought for Langstone Cutters' sculling boats.
The rubbish paint has been stripped off, and the question now is: what is the best paint to use on a plastic surface?
Yesterday, by a startling coincidence, I used another pair of the identical blades, which were made in Germany and supplied by George Sims sometime in the last millenium.
They were fitted in Dragonfly, a lovely double skiff designed by Ed Wilkinson and built in strip plank. She is slender and quick but weathercocks rather a lot in a bit of wind, probably because of the relatively high freeboard. I rowed her back down the Hamble from Botley against a brisk wind funneling up the valley (more on this trip later).
I asked the owners (Ed's mum and dad) about the paint they had used on the very smart pairs of Sims blades, and they said it was ordinary enamel.
So unless any of you experts out there have any better ideas, my blades will be coated in the residue of the vivid scarlet paint I bought for Snarleyow's wooden oars.
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| Dragonfly at the top of the Hamble, with the Meakins' Kingfisher, an Ian Oughtred design. |
4 comments:
I'm with you on that. Two pack will last longer but is ragingly expensive and blades will get scuffed up fairly quickly what ever you put on them
I'm with you on that. Two pack will last longer but is ragingly expensive and blades will get scuffed up fairly quickly what ever you put on them
Hi Chris,
Last year I re-painted the oars for "Molly" (all 10 of them) for use in the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Pageant. I used two coats of epoxy primer and then managed to get three coats of two-pack on top (blades and looms).
Our oars get quite a battering all through the year and the paint is till looking great. Buying the paint at the Boat Show helps as suppliers often give a Show discount (or at least they do if asked !).
Cheers
Geoff
Thanks for the comments, chaps, but I suddenly realised that fibreglass is one of the substances that car paints have to deal with. Nigel Armstrong at the Cutters, who spent his career in the paint industry, said they would work so I went to Halfords and got some spray cans. It should, I hope, be better than home enamel but cheaper and more retouchable than two-pack.
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